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Played the alpha. Really good stuff. Great, unique concept and I can see it leading to a lot of fun puzzles. I did enounter a bug though, when going down in the caves the bridge at the bottom with 4(I think) enemies on it caught on fire and started burning, I fell through into the water below. I restarted at the last checkpoint but the half-burned bridge did not regenerate, so there was no way for me to get onto it or make progress.

Just kidding, but I'm interested in the concept, as long as the stealth allows for readable and manageable alert states while still providing some tense moments. Also I'm curious, do you plan to make a stealthy Metroidvania? It could be 2D or 3D, but I think it would make for a very interesting game.

Wow I can't believe I put the wrong KS and Greenlight links in. Thanks for pointing that one out!

I know that fire seems like the antithesis of stealth, but fire is really just a tool to enable stealth. It's a rough equivalent, but think of it like a noisemaker arrow or a smoke grenade.

Totally agree about readable alert states. I wanted to do this entirely through the enemy animation, but I added Mark of the Ninja-style icons for people who want extra clarity. We will have the option to toggle them off, though.

A stealthy Metroidvania would be cool. I know the MOTN developers had discussions about that for their game, but I think you need to either come up with a fictional reason for enemies respawning (otherwise you're traversing old areas with every guard KO'd) or prevent players from removing enemies from play entirely. Backtracking and stealth creates a whole bunch of design issues.

Or reinforcements could come and check if they don't hear from the other guards and patrols, and if they find bodies - or if they don't find anyone or anything - they might stay in those areas, because obviously something bad went down.

I don't think the fictional reasons are much of a problem; it's more about coming up with a system that is interesting and fun to play. If stealth takeouts result in guard escalation, so to speak, this would have to remain enjoyable to deal with for the player, because otherwise stealth stops being much of an option.

At the risk of making people less likely to play Wildfire, I just wanted to add that I've been helping out with level design and we really tried to transfer some of the core Thief\Dishonored design ideas to 2D, especially in the latter half of the game.

That sounds like a good thing to my ears. The reviews also reflect that the opportunities to use the systems become broader in the second half of the game, which is where its core strengths are. If anything that sounds like a strength to lean on, because I can't see that sort of tight systems design enabling flexible approaches ever being a bad thing (for players, that is; executing the design and fixing unexpected issues sprouting from this approach is probably one of the deeper circles of hell for a developer).

I've played a couple hours of it. I'm in the mountain/cave region. It is Mark of the Ninja-ish in how slick and polished it feels, but it's not engaging me as much as MOTN did. There is a lot of complexity, but I feel like often it works against the player because it makes it difficult to predict what will work and what won't. In one recent level I was supposed to rescue 2 captives and bring them with me, so I free the captives then jump down from a hanging bridge into the water below. Oh wait, the captives can't drop down from bridges? Damn. *RELOAD* Free captives, burn bridge, jump into water. Oh wait, the captives can't jump from the ledge into the water? Maybe it's too high or something. *RELOAD* Free captives, burn bridge, toss captives one by one into a bush near the water. Jump down and tell them to follow me as I dive into an underwater tunnel. Oh wait, the captives can't dive? Well there goes my whole strategy for this level. *RELOAD LEVEL FROM START* MOTN might've been relatively simple in its rules but that also made it easier to formulate a plan because you could intuit what would work. There's a lot of complexity here but I'm not sure that's a good thing. I'll keep playing, hoping it does get better in the second half as I get a better grip on the systems.

I've played a couple hours of it. I'm in the mountain/cave region. It is Mark of the Ninja-ish in how slick and polished it feels, but it's not engaging me as much as MOTN did. There is a lot of complexity, but I feel like often it works against the player because it makes it difficult to predict what will work and what won't. In one recent level I was supposed to rescue 2 captives and bring them with me, so I free the captives then jump down from a hanging bridge into the water below. Oh wait, the captives can't drop down from bridges? Damn. *RELOAD* Free captives, burn bridge, jump into water. Oh wait, the captives can't jump from the ledge into the water? Maybe it's too high or something. *RELOAD* Free captives, burn bridge, toss captives one by one into a bush near the water. Jump down and tell them to follow me as I dive into an underwater tunnel. Oh wait, the captives can't dive? Well there goes my whole strategy for this level. *RELOAD LEVEL FROM START* MOTN might've been relatively simple in its rules but that also made it easier to formulate a plan because you could intuit what would work. There's a lot of complexity here but I'm not sure that's a good thing. I'll keep playing, hoping it does get better in the second half as I get a better grip on the systems.

We really appreciate you playing and taking the time to comment. For what it's worth I understand the frustration these issues can cause.

Villagers won't drop down through bridges or dive underwater unless panicked, this is consistent behaviour for all NPCs; villagers and guards use largely the same movement, we hoped players would intuit from guard behaviour how villagers could move. This may need to be made clearer. Though villagers won't follow you underwater they won't drown while left alone to tread water and if you are carrying one you can swim freely underwater with them and return for the other.

When it comes to dropping off a ledge into the water this is a bug with that specific level layout for which I apologise, we'll look into reworking that section. Villagers will follow you off ledges into water as they will into grass as both are considered soft landing spots.